Saturday, December 18, 2010

I mostly like to pat myself on the back for conquering my hypothalamic amenorrhea. I don't overexercise anymore (I don't know how I would with the two kids!), and I eat pretty normally, including probably more than my fair share of chocolate.

But Thursday night, my HA mentality reared itself in full force. I had two choices of activities for that evening - my work holiday party at a nice place in town, or a scrimmage with my hockey team.

I *should* have picked the work party. But I didn't. And you know what my reason was? I picked burning calories over consuming them. And I actually thought about it like that. I knew there would be all kinds of yummy food at the party, so rather than go and enjoy myself, I opted to avoid it.

Which is really, really lame. And I'm kicking myself for it now. I don't get to see my coworkers much these days as I'm only in the office one day a week, and I've known a bunch of them for a long time, and consider them friends.

Hopefully I have learned my lesson from this, though, and even if I do feel pre-tortured by the food options, I will go, I will eat, and I will enjoy myself.

I really don't know why I even think about this, I'm at a perfectly healthy weight, and despite my recent splurges, the scale hasn't budged. So what was I so worried about? Stupid stupid stupid.

I guess the mindset never fully goes away, no matter how much we might tell ourselves we're over it.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

I took Ceejay's excellent suggestion to use progesterone to try and fiddle with my cycle in order not to be bleeding at my appointment on 12/13. I started progesterone on cd14, with the hopes that if I took it for eight days, the drop in progesterone at that point would cause the crimson bitch to ride, and I'd be CD6 for the appointment.

Well, not so much. I ovulated on CD16 and had my usual non-progesterone-lengthened 10-day LP, so I ended up being CD4. I guess my LP wants to be 10 days come hell or high water! However, this period put the crimson in crimson bitch. I think I had my heaviest flow *ever* on CD1, and actually bled through my tampon overnight, CD1-2 which has never happened to me before. CD2 was medium, CD3 light, so by the time my apt rolled around on CD4 I was just spotting. I was already feeling much more sanguine about the appointment by that stage, as the bitch was much more normal than my previous five cycles, where I'd never gotten past the "light" flow (in my terms anyway).

Soooooooo... the doc came in to do the hysteroscopy. In hindsight, I probably should have asked how frequently she performs these, I'm guessing based on how it went, that the answer is "not often". There was a label on the machine that said "use Filter A for hysteroscopy (flexible tube), Filter OFF for Xoscopy (hard tube)" (I forget what the X was). anyway, it took about 15-20 minutes for her to figure out how to turn filter A on, which got rid of black circles that were in the picture. Lovely. Then she tried for about five minutes to get the camera through my cervix with no success. dilated with a pipette (no problem), and then was able to get it in. Problem was, everything was super fuzzy, she couldn't get it focused properly. So they injected me with a ton of saline to try and clear things out - THAT was uncomfortable. I felt like I could feel it flooding out of my tubes into my abdominal cavity if that's even possible! then she said she was at the fundus (top of my ute), but kept getting these funny orange/pink wavy lines that were going across the screen that wouldn't go away.

Then she had the nurse go and get another camera. this one looked totally sketchy, there was this black gunk that was all over the picture and seemed to be on the camera as it was static. I was less than thrilled with that, wondering if it could introduce infection, but of course I didn't say a word. This one also did the pink wavy line thing, but we did get to at least get a fuzzy view of the top of my uterus and the entrances to my tubes, both of which seemed to be clear.

She did apologize that things did not work out terribly well, but said that the fact that my uterus did inflate nicely with the saline and there were no obvious adhesions, along with the fact that my period was more normal, suggested to her that if there was any scarring at all, it was quite minimal. I think I can agree with that.

The final directive was to 'go forth and fornicate'. Well, not quite in those words. But we are "definitely" to try this cycle, as there seems to be a higher incidence of pregnancy post HSC/HSG as things might be cleaned out. We weren't actually planning on it because if I were to get pregnant the baby would be due very close to Timmy's bday, and I already worry about him as a middle child, so i was thinking it might be better for him to have his birthday celebration be unique. But consensus amongst people I've polled (which includes me as my sister's bday is six days after mine) is that it can be fun to have birthdays together, and certainly not a bad thing. So I think we'll go for it. (Because chances are it's not going to end up being an issue anyway, right?) If you have anything to add to the discussion of close sibling birthdays, I'd love to hear it!

About Me

Thought I would "get healthy" in preparation for having a baby. Lost 20lbs to a BMI of around 20 in May-Jun '04. Went off the pill right after that, and surprise surprise, didn't even get my period. Diagnosed with hypothalamic amenorrhea. Gained some weight, cut exercise, didn't have anyone else with HA to ask questions of, so ended up moving to injectables, 4 BFN cycles. Surprise natural pregnancy while waiting to do IVF (and having gained those 20lbs back, cut my exercise 50%). DS#1 born 08/2006. Cycled fairly normally 1 year later, DS#2 born 09/2008. Cycles returned 10 months later. M/c 06/2010, then DS#3 born 04/2012 through IVF.